Easter weekend I had exhibited at my first arts and crafts fair! I had a lot of fun setting up my little booth and meeting other exhibitors. The kids were great and really seemed to love my fish, so I gave away coloring pages to them.

I made friends with a really nice girl who loves otters–so I made a quick sketch!

I realized this wasn’t exactly the best type of fair for me to sell my paintings, but I learned a lot and had fun!

Pancakes and Booze was an awesome and exhausting first show. For my first show, I’d say it was a success. I met a lot of new artist friends. It was really cool seeing the different styles and talents in the DC artist community. I would definitely do this show again!

Geometry of Puako Bay features the fish and other critters that my family and I saw on our vacation in Hawaii. We snorkeled and scuba’d along the Kona coast of Hawaii for a week and captured some amazing Hawaiian reef fish on the GoPro!

I did a rough color sketch last night to experiment with different color tints and tones. I was going for a sunset look, but I think it looks more like sushi! The second half was to be in blues, but I may switch to experimenting with green.

I really love how the colors turned out in my newest painting! The metallic silver paint creates a great contrast to the matte colors and made it feel very art deco to me.

This was actually my first time painting on canvas board in a while, as I prefer the “bounce” (is that thing?) of a wrapped canvas. I primed it with several layers of sanded gesso to give it a smoother texture.

Check out my original design: colored in red, white, and blue (I drew it around July 4th).

I’m using the word mandala loosely here. This was my first experimentation with a more geometric design and metallic paints, inspired by the art deco architecture and decor around Miracle Mile, Los Angeles.